Kim Il-song's North Korea

Front Cover
Bloomsbury Academic, 1999 M04 30 - 262 pages

Hunter provides a glimpse inside North Korean society, detailing the everyday life of people living in perhaps the most isolated, secretive society of the 20th century. In this declassified CIA study, she describes the world's most extreme cult society under the charismatic totalitarian leader, Kim Il-song, who ruled his people for 45 years—longer than any other leader of the 20th century.

Kim Il-song's totalitarian cult society comes closest to George Orwell's 1984 than any society yet contrived. Hunter brings to life what it is like to live in a thoroughly thought-controlled society—which also is the world's most class-conscious society. Based on all the sources available to the CIA at the time, this book is the most comprehensive look at North Korean life ever published. It is essential reading for foreign policy officials, Asian Studies scholars, and the general public interested in world affairs.

About the author (1999)

HELEN-LOUISE HUNTER is an attorney who has engaged in private practice with an large international law firm in Washington, D.C. and has served as Permanent Law Clerk in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland./e For more than 20 years, she was a Far East specialist at the CIA. In the late 1970s, she served as the Assistant National Intelligence Officer for the Far East.

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